PassFail
by Argentum-LS
Summary: When Methos is charged with a murder he didn't commit, he needs Joe's help to solve the case before the police find out about the one he did.


_A/N: Written for craterdweller for the event of fandom5K, based on a request for a Methos and Joe story. Thanks to idelthoughts for beta reading; she really pulled my ass out of the fire on this one. As always, questions, comments, concrit, and squee are welcome._

 **Pass/Fail**

by argentum_LS

The best way to avoid a murder charge was to die.

Existing in a world that pitted every Immortal against each other—winner takes all—meant that one Immortal getting caught killing another was inevitable. Methos had been in that situation before, and he undoubtedly would be again. It was one of the many reasons he chose to avoid the Game, as much as possible. One breaking on the Wheel had been enough to ingrain the paranoid caution he'd already been cultivating. Though most modern criminal justice systems had rejected that kind of torture, facing a murder charge was still dangerous for Immortals; too many truths waited to come out under a close enough scrutiny. In that situation, Immortals almost always chose to sacrifice their current persona rather than be convicted.

Dying was the easy way out, if one was willing to pay the price.

"Except, I didn't do it," Methos stated. "I'm innocent." It was hard not to add a _this time_ to end, and he was only able to restrain himself because he knew his conversation was being recorded and would be used against him if he said anything incriminating.

The police were all certain he would with enough space. He was the top suspect. As far as Methos knew, he was the only suspect. His PhD advisor was dead and all the evidence pointed to the lowly, and obviously stressed out, graduate student who'd been spending so much time with him recently.

All Methos had done was step away for one afternoon, and now here he was.

Overly bright lights shone off the metal and Plexiglas carrels that formed the visitors' room, through which echoed the murmur of the other prisoners having their own careful meetings with the loved ones who'd come to visit them. Methos squirmed against his chair, searching for a comfortable position on the molded plastic, while on the other side of the glass, Joe sat as if his chair was about to collapse.

"But, let me get this right…You're _not_ going to get a lawyer?" Joe thumped his cane on the floor, earning him a warning look from one of the guards standing sentry along the walls. "Why the hell not? Seems to me that you wasted your call on me." His hair had gone completely white since Methos had last seen him and the creases on his forehead had turned to grooves, but he hadn't lost any of his intensity.

Methos shook his head. "Someone had to know I'm in here, and last I checked there's no one Watching out for me." He also managed to hold himself back from glancing at any of the cameras. There was nothing like checking on the surveillance to give away that one was trying to hide something. "It's better if I handled the legal side of this myself." A lawyer would want to know his alibi, and Methos suspected that "I was on the other side of town cutting someone's head off" was not going to win him any points.

Stroking his beard, Joe mulled the explanation over. The shrewdness in the squint of his eyes promised that he'd get the full story as soon as he could. For now, he stuck to their neutral conversation. "Are you sure you're up for this? It's been a few years since you studied US law. You could end up making things a lot worse for yourself."

"I'll deal with that if I have to. I just need you to look into the case, find out anything you can about it. They're not giving me all the details." He leaned as close to the glass as he dared and added, "I'm ABD, Joe. Everything else aside, there's no way I'd kill my advisor now, not with as much as I needed his help to get through these last few weeks. All I had left was my defense, which was all but a formality." Getting his PhD was also a big part of why he wasn't willing to end this life; he had too much invested in this identity, and too much he'd wanted to do with it before he was ready to move on.

" _You_ needed _his_ help?" Joe asked.

For the first time since the police had knocked on his door, Methos felt a moment of relief. He'd gotten himself out of far worse situations than this, but the vote of confidence was still appreciated. "Well, his Doric Greek accent is terrible," he admitted. He closed his eyes briefly with the sudden recollection of why he was sitting here. "Was. His accent _was_ terrible." He stopped, unable to finish the statement, though not for fear of being overheard. Jumping on the counter and announcing that he was 5000 years old would probably only improve his case at this point, or at least give him a way out that didn't involve goading another inmate into stabbing him. No, Dr. Larsen had been one of those rare mortals who truly seemed to understand the nuances of the ancient world he studied and Methos was going to miss him. "I need to find out who really killed him. I owe him that."

While Joe's own passion in history was mostly focused around 20th century music, his understanding of people had made him the Watcher he was—especially his understanding that Immortals _were_ people. He'd never treated Methos as anything else. "I'll do what I can," he promised.

That was all he could ask. They spoke about even more mundane things until the guard called time on the visit. When Methos finally hung up the phone, he felt like he'd made a good choice in sticking this one out.

* * *

The bar was closed when Methos arrived, as he'd hoped. He jimmied the lock on the back door to let himself in anyway. He'd seen the lights on and knew Joe had to be there.

Indeed, Joe's voice rumbled from the back room, strident yet unintelligible from behind the closed office door. His laptop, meanwhile, sat open on the bar top, practically begging someone to help himself to its content. Methos eyed the black screen for a moment, then went to pull himself a beer and wait for Joe to finish his phone call. Having a few minutes to relax in a familiar and friendly establishment was what he needed right now. The jeans and sweatshirt he'd changed into after being released still felt foreign against the angles of his body despite his only having worn the prison uniform for a couple days.

In short order, he heard Joe swear, followed by the crash of a heavy object hitting the floor, and then Joe stormed out of the office, slamming the door behind him.

He pulled up short on spotting Methos. "What the hell are you doing here? Is this some kind of joke?"

Methos threw up his hands in defense, bumping his mug and sloshing beer onto the counter. "I'm out on bail," he explained. "Keep your nose clean, don't leave town. You know the drill. I think the police are hoping I'll lead them to the weapon." He tipped his chin toward the office door. "What was that about? It's been awhile since I've seen you that angry."

Joe's eyes narrowed while he tried to reconcile the two conflicts he was now embroiled in. "Nothing," he answered, then immediately amended it to, "Watcher business." He crossed his arms, as if to put a bow on the topic.

Not that Methos could be deterred so easily. "Oh, come on, Joe. I thought we dealt with this ages ago. I used to _be_ a Watcher, remember?"

"Yeah, I remember. 'Used to be' being the key phrase. You been out, what, twenty years now?"

Joe had never been so reticent to discuss the Watchers with Methos before. Whatever was going on had to be pretty major. Either that, or Joe thought it could affect the Game. Both of those possibilities only made Methos more curious.

"Hey, I'm under investigation for murder," he pointed out. "I could really use something else to think about. And, based on how you were yelling in there, I suspect you could use someone to vent at." He tried to make himself look unassuming and unthreatening, channeling as much Adam Pierson as he could. Last time Joe had looked like this, Methos had learned about Joe's illicit daughter. If this time was half as good, it would be exactly the distraction he needed. While he was living as Jordan Moye now—with different interests, aptitudes, and quirks than either the old Watcher persona or his ancient self—some parts of his personality never changed.

Leaning forward, Joe planted his crossed arms on the bar across from Methos. "OK," he said, "You don't want to think about the guy you didn't kill. Why don't you tell me about the guy you did?" Belatedly, he glanced around the bar, confirming that Methos had come in alone.

Methos hid his confusion that Joe would even need to ask about it in a long swig of beer that ended with him thumbing the foam off his upper lip. Joe didn't seem upset, but there was still a strange undercurrent to the question. "He was just some thug who wouldn't take 'no' for an answer." With a shrug, he dismissed the fight as the nuisance it had been—a dismissal that Joe didn't seem to agree with. "What? I never met the guy until we bumped into each other at the library. I swear!"

Joe's face contorted through a few expressions that ended with him pounding his fist onto the bar. "Dammit. For once, I'd hoped you were messing around with us. It would make things a helluva lot easier." He hissed out a breath between his teeth. "You're right," he said, "we don't have a Watcher on you. Before you thank me, don't. I had nothing to do with it. The decision came from higher up and was made out of concern that keeping official records on your whereabouts and goings-on might break our Oath."

"The Methos Uncertainty Principle?" Methos quipped, amused at the idea—and the Watchers recognition that—having his actions observed would change them. No sooner had the joke popped out of his mouth than it crossed his mind that he might be better off riffing on Schrödinger than Heisenberg—further assuming he had the principles correctly identified. This was why he'd gone back to studying Classics.

"Let's just say the decision's meant to protect all of us."

"Right," Methos agreed. So, he'd guessed that part correctly. "And what does this have to do with my challenger?"

"See, the thing is, he _did_ have a Watcher. Young guy, been out of the Academy for about two years. He was doing everything by the book until a few days ago when he filed a report that reads like it was pulled out of his ass."

Methos' brow furled as he started to put the pieces together. "Maybe we're talking about a different Immortal? A different fight?"

Joe shook his head. "Nah, that fight was the first one in this city is months. Quickenings are pretty visible and we're always the ones who gotta come up with an excuse for them. Now, I didn't figure out your involvement in this one until we were talking in the jail and you got really cagey about your alibi. It's hard to exonerate yourself from a murder charge on the grounds that you were off killing someone else at the time." He asked the last as if still needing to confirm that this was, in fact, the situation.

Once again, Methos shrugged. "He Challenged me. He lost. It's the Game." If it hadn't been for the timing, he'd never have given the fight another thought. "I don't see the problem with the Watcher. Reprimand him and send him back for retraining. Or, I don't know, reassign him to the mail room. Unless the Council is back to firing people the permanent way?"

Joe reflexively rubbed his chest, where the long-healed scars sat from the bullets that had been meant to end his own tenure in the Watchers. "That policy was the _first_ one the new Director changed when she took over," he said. "There's been a lot of changes since you left." He tapped his fingers on the bar, then abruptly spun the laptop around and brought the screen to life. Gesturing for Methos to take a look, he added, "I'd better not regret this."

The Challenge Report in question was already loaded. It only took Methos a few seconds to read it, though it took him until he drained the dregs of his mug to make sense of it. The description of the winning Immortal was plausible enough, but in no way was it describing him. Nor was there a picture, which was atypical. "Unknown Immortal," he said, on reaching the name of the winner. "Well, the Watcher got that part right." He looked up at Joe, brow furrowed. "This doesn't make sense. Why submit an incorrect report? Watchers don't see everything; they can't." Watchers had to eat, sleep, defecate, and live their own lives, just like the Immortals they observed did. "That new Director didn't institute a policy punishing Watchers for missing things, did she?"

"No," Joe answered. "That's problem #1." He clicked over to another page that held the summary profile of the Unknown Immortal. "This is #2. Apparently, our Immortal friend here has been responsible for taking a number of heads over the—" He pushed the screen back and squinted in the way of someone who needed reading glasses—"six-hundred years of his illustrious life. Now, I know my memory isn't perfect, but I swear I never heard of this guy until the other day."

"He's quite the badass," Methos said, familiarizing himself with the list of kills. He had heard of most of those Immortals. A couple of them he'd been friends with, including…. He skimmed a finger down the list and came to a stop on the name that had caught his eye. "Well, well. Somehow he's getting the credit for killing Marcus Constantine. Last I checked, Constantine lost his head to the Hunters." His gaze shifted back up to Joe. "Either you have a Watcher on your hands who's more interested in fiction writing, or you've identified problem #3."

"That's one of the things I've been checking into." Joe busied himself with refilling Methos' beer and filling one for himself. "None of my contacts have heard anything about the Hunters being re-formed. In fact, the Director assured me that if any such thing happens, she'll deal with it personally. Nah, I caught the Constantine credit, too, which prompted me to go digging through the old books. It's a lot harder to change those. My library is limited here, but I've been able to verify that that a half-dozen of the other Immortals on that list were either accidental deaths or they lost their heads to mortals. One of them was a victim of the French Revolution."

Methos shut his eyes briefly, thinking. Since Watchers couldn't identify new Immortals without compelling evidence like seeing them revive, lots of Immortals stayed off the books until they showed up for a fight. If the Immortal didn't share his name at that time—or the Watcher wasn't there to hear it—it was possible he'd continue to go unidentified. No one would blink at that designation on a kill. Only, that clearly wasn't what had happened here. Someone had gone through the effort of creating a profile for an Immortal, complete with physical description and the sketch of a history, and then crediting him with deaths that weren't Challenge related. It was clever work since it could be done with minimal editing. The question was: why do it? Grabbing the second beer, he drained it and stood up. The stool scraped back like a needle on a record.

"Sit down," Joe ordered, correctly reading Methos' intent. "Unless you're planning to jump bail, you're not going anywhere. The Watcher filed his report, then got in the car and drove home for semester break to his parents' house. In Oregon."

For a moment, Methos seriously debated going after the Watcher anyway. He could get across state lines and back without anyone catching him, couldn't he? He slumped back onto the seat as the events of the last few days flashed through his memory. No, if he wanted to get out of this one with his identity in tact, he had to be a good boy.

"Then, I guess you'd better give me another refill," he said. He was determined to find any silver lining he could. "And maybe you could tell me what else you've managed to find out."

* * *

Professor Larsen's house was a white split-level in a neighborhood of homes that looked to have all sprung from the ground in the same week of 1972. In the few days since his death, the lawn had turned into a field of dandelions and a dreariness had settled over the place, like the home itself was mourning its lost owner.

Yellow crime scene tape still hung across the front door. Methos pushed it aside and let himself in with the key he found under a fake rock in the strip of rose bushes that lined the driveway.

"Are you sure we should be doing this?" Joe asked.

"We absolutely should not be doing this," Methos confirmed. "I, however, don't care. No matter how many times I've said goodbye to friends, it never feels real unless I see it for myself." He stepped into the still interior and stopped, peering around at the stacks of books that lined the walls and all up and down the stairs. There were more books than any mortal could ever have found time to read, which Larsen had once told him was the point: "I can't die until I read them all," he'd informed Methos the first time he'd welcomed him in, adding wistfully, "All this knowledge and yet it's only a small portion of what we've lost."

The house had always held the musty scent of paper and books. Now Methos also caught whiffs of the metallic scent of blood and the sweet one of rot. He followed them through the front hall and into the great room where yet more books packed the shelves and spilled onto the floor. Larsen had converted the room into a home office long ago. He'd traded the expected couch for a couple of La-Z-Boy chairs and the decorative end tables for a long table positioned to run the length of the room. Stacks of papers in every changing depths covered the surface, save for the space his laptop occupied.

The body had been taken away, but no one had yet come to clean up the blood that stained one of the chairs and a large swath of the carpet. A couple flies buzzed through the room, and Methos swatted half-heartedly at them.

"He was shot?" Methos asked, confirming again what the police had suggested and Joe had said. That detail was one of many that hadn't been officially released, probably because they were hoping their suspect would further incriminate himself by knowing too much.

"According to the police report, someone came in through the back door—" Joe gestured with his cane at the sliding glass door that led from the great room out to a fenced-in backyard—"and plugged the professor before leaving through the front door. One of the neighbors who'd been out gardening reported hearing the shots, then seeing someone with your build wearing a college hoodie leaving the premises."

"Tall and skinny with a hoodie. No, I can't imagine a lot of people would fit that description." Methos didn't try to hold back his sarcasm. When the university was in session, there were easily thousands of people who'd make a match. He could think of a few dozen off-hand from his class alone.

Larsen's laptop was gone. The place where it normally rested on the stone table now sat empty, save for dried splashes of coffee. The rest of the contents had spilled across and soaked into the closest piles of paper, while the mug had landed on the floor, saved from breaking by the carpet. Methos picked it up and set it back on the table; it seemed the least he could do to restore some order to the room. The fingerprinting was already done—and his were everywhere anyway—so he didn't need to worry about what he'd touched.

"The neighbor insisted that the person he saw was you," Joe added. He came around to peer over Methos' shoulder at the papers: end-of-the-semester research projects, many now destroyed beyond readability. "What do ya think the university is going to do about those? Lotta work down the drain, and it doesn't look like he had a chance to grade them, though if I remember my own college years right, he was probably looking for any excuse not to."

Methos snorted a small laugh of commiseration. How true that was. "He wouldn't have. The stacks are for the TAs. I was supposed to come back that night and collect my allotment after he went through and marked off who had turned their papers in. He was always paranoid that the students might accuse a TA of losing a paper as a means for turning it in late." He sighed. Not having to deal with projects produced under the haze of beer, Red Bull, and absolute faith in the ability of the spellchecker to fix any mistakes would have been appreciated under any other circumstance. "I'm sure the university has some obscure policy in place to deal with situations like this."

"So, you were Larsen's TA and advisee—"

"And friend," Methos interjected.

"—and friend," Joe agreed, giving Methos' arm a gentle touch, "and the police still think you had more to gain than lose by killing him?"

"Phillip reminded me a lot of Don Salzer," Methos said, remembering his trainer, mentor, and friend in the Watchers. Don had also been a lover of books and knowledge, just as Joe was. No one could say Methos didn't have a type. "I was planning on telling him the truth." He shook himself out of his memory without specifying which 'him' he meant. Maybe both. It was easy to be generous with sharing his secret when the person he planned to tell was no longer alive. "The prevailing theory as to my motivation for this crime is stress. I'm believed to have cracked under the pressure of my impending dissertation defense. The police think Larsen had threatened to flunk me."

He frowned down at the table. There were more stacks of papers than TAs. A smaller pile had been set aside with a blank Post-It Note stuck on it. Picking the papers up, he leafed through the pages, noting immediately their issues. Abrupt font changes, text that hadn't been stripped of its hyperlinks, a date in the header that was years off: they all showed signs of lazy plagiarism. There was a lot of that going around.

"I get why the cops suspected you to begin with," Joe said. He'd wandered over to look out the back door, perhaps hoping to spot a clue that would exonerate Methos. "That makes sense. But why arrest you? Between grading and your own studying, you could have been locked in your room for days with no corroborating witnesses. I've seen how you get. Hell, anyone who knows you could tell the cops what you're like. They had to've thought of that."

The corner of Methos' mouth quirked and he shook his head at his own foolishness. "That was just bad luck. I'd just gotten back from the Challenge when they arrived. I'm afraid I ran into difficulty with explaining the blood on my clothes. Understandably, they took my refusal to tell them where I'd been as proof that I'd been here. Joe, you said you sent a notice to that Watcher to come back to Seacouver, didn't you?"

"Hm? Yeah. I told him he needed to come in for a formal debrief pending his reassignment. Standard procedure."

It wasn't. At least, it hadn't been when Methos was in the Watchers. That could be another of their changes. Joe wanted to know why the Watcher had lied to begin with. More importantly, the fact of the faked Chronicle spoke to a deeper conspiracy that needed to be uncovered.

"Why?" Joe prodded.

"Because I think the police were right about the motive. And I think I figured out who the real perpetrator was." Methos returned the papers to the table and gave one last sweep of the place where he'd spent many hours in the company of a good friend. Phillip had deserved to die of old age in some far off decade, surrounded by a houseful of completed books. "Now all I need to do is get them to listen to me."

* * *

Methos recognized the young Watcher from around campus: medium height, shaved head, thick shoulders, and thicker glasses. He was probably a student, though Methos had only crossed paths with him a few times in the gym. Right now, he was wearing a throwback T-shirt for "The Cure" and jeans, with his hands jammed in the front pockets; the swagger to his step said he had no idea he was in trouble.

"You wanted me to stop in?" he asked on spotting Joe. The sunlight flooding into the bar from his entrance followed by its loss as the door shut behind him gave Methos a chance to shift further out of sight before the kid realized there were now three people in the bar. Missing such an obvious detail would normally be a black mark against a Watcher, if it weren't that he was up against someone who'd mastered the art of hiding in plain sight.

Joe indicated a table near the stage and the seat that would put the kid's back to where Methos was seated. "I'll be right with you." He returned to his laptop, hunching over the keyboard with exaggerated concentration.

Letting someone wait before plumbing them for information was an old tactic. People didn't like silence, didn't like not knowing what was going on. The kid peered around the part of the bar he could see without making it look like he was getting nervous, an effect ruined when his knee started to jitter. A few seconds after that, he fumbled his phone out of his back pocket, only to drop it unactivated onto the table when he caught Joe glaring at him in disapproval.

He straightened up, crossing his feet at the ankles to stop the jittering and peered up, noting the second floor balcony entrance and the spotlights aimed at the vacant stage. "So, what's this about? I thought you said you needed to talk to me about a new assignment? It sounded urgent."

Without answering, Joe typed something, then closed the laptop lid and lumbered back into his office.

"I could come back later," the kid suggested, half-rising. "I'm supposed to be going to a show with my parents this afternoon. They said that if I had to drive all the way back out here, we should make a weekend out of it…" He trailed off at the realization that Joe couldn't hear him and wasn't listening anyway.

"What's your hurry?" Methos asked.

The kid whipped around and nearly fell out of his chair. His eyes took a moment to focus on the dark figure, and then his mouth dropped open and he had to again scrabble for balance.

Methos stood up in one languid move that was the antithesis of the kid's own clumsiness. He slipped out of his coat, letting the folds drape so that they showed the outline of his sword rather than concealing it, and set it aside. _You know what I am_ , Methos was saying, _and I know you know._

"I—You—" The kid's, too, stood up and threw his shoulders. He couldn't match Methos for height, but he wasn't going to let himself be intimidated, either. "You killed him."

"So you do recognize me," Methos commented. "I wouldn't have guessed that from your closeout report."

Joe was still in his office and the kid was finally starting to realize that he'd been set up. Sweat broke out on his forehead. He cast around looking in vain for help.

"What I don't understand is why you thought no one would notice. You're part of an organization that's been keeping records for thousands of years. The Watchers aren't some fly-by-night data mining company. As I recall, you took an oath to observe _and_ record. That would mean accurate recording. Or did you miss that part?"

Having an Immortal interrogate him about his role in the Watchers wasn't something the kid had been trained for. "You. Killed. Him," he repeated. He glanced down at his tattoo, then hid his arm behind his back. He took a step forward, a challenge in itself. If he'd been Immortal himself, his next words would've formalized that.

He wasn't, so Methos didn't rise to the bait. "Yes," he agreed, blandly. "That's what we do. If he wanted to keep his head, he shouldn't have Challenged me."

"Will was _good_ ," the kid protested. "He trained, like, all the time, and he was, like, almost _a hundred years old._ You're nobody, a newb. You didn't even have a record in the Chronicles." He sucked in a breath and noisily blew it back out, his tone sliding from anger to hurt confusion. "How could you beat him?"

So that's what had happened. The crush was obvious now, as was the kid's desperation to protect his Immortal's reputation even in death. It wouldn't be the first time a Watcher had lied on record, in the same way that sportsmen exaggerated the size of the fish they'd caught or the ferocity of the bear they'd shot. Often those lies did slip by, especially before the Watchers had digitized their information and when cross-checking took years or decades instead of seconds. It was just the kid's bad luck that his local coordinator happened to also be friends with one of the Immortals involved.

"Oh, kid," Methos said, "You have so much to learn." Strangely enough, Methos found himself wanting to give the kid that chance. Watchers officially weren't supposed to befriend their assignments, yet when it did happen, it was usually to both parties' benefit.

"My name is Eric," the kid shot back.

With a small smile and downward tip of his chin, Methos acknowledged this new detail, though he saw no reason to respond in kind. Maybe someday he would. The kid did have good taste in music. "Well, Eric, you went to a lot of effort to give your...you said he went by Will?...to give Will a worthy adversary for his final fight. Inventing a fake Immortal is truly some dedi—"

"What?! I didn't! The entry was already there. I swear. I just found it and...that entry was fake?" He sounded pained and cut his gaze to the floor.

"Totally," Methos replied, thinking furiously. A faked entry? Listing only Immortals who'd died outside the Game? That sounded more like a placeholder or an exercise than a deliberate attempt to obfuscate the Chronicles. "You'd do well to brush up on your history before you step back out in the field. Those were people on that list of kills. Real people who lived very long lives. They deserve to be remembered as more than throwaway names." Immortals remembered the mortals who touched their lives; the Watchers remembered the Immortals who shaped theirs. That was the true immortality.

Eric began to nod, agreeing so vehemently that his glasses looked ready to shake right off his nose.

"Joseph," Methos called, pitching his voice to carry. "It's your turn."

Joe came out of his office, shaking his head. "I don't know if I wanna follow that act. Alright, let me grab some drinks and we're going to have a chat about how to fix what you did do—" He raised his eyebrows at Eric—"and what you're going to do to start to make up for it. This guy—" Now he pointed to Methos—"needs an alibi for the time of the fight. Technically, you were both there, so, you're going to provide it."

* * *

The visitor's room looked exactly the same as it had a few days before, down to the placement of the guards, yet the sense of hopelessness had lifted from Methos' shoulders. He took his seat and met the glare of the person across from him. He was tall and skinny, with pinched features and brown hair that was looped up into a bun. Any resemblance between the two of them was superficial, yet easy enough to imagine from the perspective of a neighbor who wanted to be helpful and hadn't gotten a close look.

"What are you doing here?" Methos' now-former student snarled without bothering to pick up the phone first.

The vitriol would've taken Methos aback, if he didn't expect it. "No one's ever happy to see me. I wonder why that is," he mused, to himself and whomever was listening in. The question was purely rhetorical. In truth, he had no right to be here. He'd forged the visitor paperwork just for this meeting, and he would delete it as soon as he got home.

Usually, he saw his mortal students as a sort of indistinguishable mass of faces and sullen dispositions. The haircuts and clothing fashions shifted from year to year. Their questions and observations did not. As long as Methos kept up with the pop culture references, he could run his discussion sections by rote. He knew their names for the duration of their enrollment in his classes and then let them slip from his mind. One of his students truly surprising him—truly becoming worth remembering—was rare, and, as he'd seen, sometimes unwelcome.

Cocking his head, he studied the face of the person who'd caused him so much trouble. Slumped in his seat and shrinking inside of a too-large uniform, Caden looked impossibly young, and Methos almost felt a moment of pity for his lost future. All of this because Caden had cheated on his final project and brought a gun to his attempt to scare his professor into giving him a passing grade anyway.

"What do you want?" Caden tried again, perhaps reading something in Methos' expression that worried him more than the possibility of life in prison. He held the phone tentatively against his ear, as if expecting Methos to yell at him. He still hadn't figured out that getting yelled at was no longer the worst consequence for his actions. When Methos still didn't answer, Caden changed tacks. "This is all your fault. You're the one who did this to me."

That was true in a general sense, as Methos was the one who'd alerted the police to Caden's involvement. They'd investigated and found the missing laptop, which Methos had also told them about. Between that and Methos' new alibi, they'd been forced to reconsider the target of their arrest. So, Caden managed to be right in his accusation while nicely eliding his actions that led to all the others.

The buzzer rang, alerting the guards that inmates were entering or leaving the visitation room. Someone let out a loud sob and someone else shouted a reassurance that justice would be served.

Caden's fear started to harden before Methos' eyes into hatred and Methos met it with a sharp nod of recognition. It was always better to know where he stood than to wonder—and to possibly forget. He held the silence a few moments longer, then rose. The visit ended without either of them speaking so the other could hear.

There was really only one thing Methos wanted to say to Caden, but now was not the right time.

* * *

He used the walk to the parking lot to process the last of the emotion from his visit, aided by the vindication of getting to exit the prison a free man. If not for a Watcher who needed some well-intentioned bad judgement covered up, Methos might be having a very different day.

Joe was waiting in the car. He rolled down the window when he spotted Methos approaching so soon after leaving. "Didn't they let you see 'im?"

"They did," Methos confirmed. He climbed into the waiting car and settled back to enjoy his last few minutes of peace before he returned to the end-of-semester grind. With the charges against him dropped, he'd returned to his TA position and desperate pleas from the university for him to help clean up the mess Professor Larsen's death had left the department in. "He has no idea that he's done anything wrong." He watched a young mother and her toddler son heading into the facility, waiting until they'd cleared the first fence before adding, "You'll want to keep an eye on him."

"I'll want—" Joe stopped as he caught on to what Methos was implying. "Well, I'll be." Immortals considered the identification of potential Immortals to be privileged information; for Methos to share it spoke a louder thank you for Joe's efforts than anything else could have done. "We'll be sure to get a guy on him when it's time. We don't usually get to chronicle people from the beginning."

"No need. He's not going to last long in there; not with his attitude." Methos didn't say the rest; he didn't need to.

Five months, twenty years, eventually Caden would get released. Phillip Larsen would still be dead. The Game would still be ticking on. The Watchers would still be observing. Caden still wouldn't understand what he'd done wrong or what his life had become. When he got out, he'd learn that the worst way to avoid a murder charge was to die.


End file.
